Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Mark Nagurski has a good post on Really Practical Marketing on why people hate networking. Six reasons why people hate networking include:

• It’ll be full of people trying to sell me things
• I don’t want to stand there and try to sell to other people either
• I’m just a startup business I won’t fit in
• My kind of customers aren’t there
• There’s no chance to do any real business there anyway
• I don’t know anybody, who will I talk to?

I must profess I’m not that much of a networking fan, but it’s something which I’m putting more emphasis on over the coming months. I was at a networking event organised by the Irish Academy of Public Relations recently which featured Tricia Murphy of the TiG Alliance - the self processed the Queen of Networking. Despite the cheesy title, she really put the crowd to ease and structured the session well to move the attendees around and get people talking.

Some observations I made on the night and based on Mark’s post and other material I’ve read recently:

• A lot of people are put off by networking opportunities because they don’t know anyone. When they introduce themselves to people at the event, they can often latch on to someone for the duration of the event. I’m often guilty of this. One simple way to get around this is to set a minimum number of business cards that you want to come away from the event with.
• Another simple suggestion is to attend the event with someone else from your organisation. You’ll be more at ease and get introduced to their contacts.
• Latch on to a maven if they’re at the event. I was at Le Web a couple of years ago and met Fergus Burns of Nooked, who proceeded to introduce me to a veritable who’s who of the online world anytime I was chatting to him over the course of the event. I would hate to see Fergus’s address book, he knows everybody!
• When you’re talking to someone, find out about what they do. If you know something of interest to them, talk about that instead of going into a sales pitch. As Hugh MacLeod says “What’s true in life is also true in marketing: If you want to be boring, talk about yourself. If you want to be interesting, talk about other people.”

On a related note, for information about networking events or opportunities read Conor Lynch’s new Connector blog. Speaking of networking I hope to make it along to the SMS Text News mobile networking event on St Stephens Green this evening